Bush Plays the Hitler Card

Bush Plays the Hitler Card

by Patrick J. Buchanan

"A little learning is a dangerous thing," wrote Alexander Pope.

Daily, our 43rd president testifies to Pope's point.

Addressing the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's birth, Bush said those who say we should negotiate with Iran or Hamas are like the fools who said we should negotiate with Adolf Hitler.

"As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared, 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement. ..."

Again, Bush has made a hash of history.

Appeasement is the name given to what Neville Chamberlain did at Munich in September 1938. Rather than fight Germany in another great war – to keep 3.5 million Germans under a Czech rule they despised – he agreed to their peaceful transfer to German rule. With these Germans went the lands their ancestors had lived upon for centuries, German Bohemia, or the Sudetenland.

Chamberlain's negotiated deal with Hitler averted a European war – at the expense of the Czech nation. That was appeasement.

German tanks, however, did not roll into Poland until a year later, Sept. 1, 1939. Why did the tanks roll? Because Poland refused to negotiate over Danzig, a Baltic port of 350,000 that was 95 percent German and had been taken from Germany at the Paris peace conference of 1919, in violation of Wilson's 14 Points and his principle of self-determination.

Hitler had not wanted war with Poland. He had wanted an alliance with Poland in his anti-Comintern pact against Joseph Stalin.

But the Poles refused to negotiate. Why? Because they were a proud, defiant, heroic people and because Neville Chamberlain had insanely given an unsolicited war guarantee to Poland. If Hitler invaded, Chamberlain told the Poles, Britain would declare war on Germany.

From March to August 1939, Hitler tried to negotiate Danzig. But the Poles, confident in their British war guarantee, refused. So, Hitler cut his deal with Stalin, and the two invaded and divided Poland.

The cost of the war that came of a refusal to negotiate Danzig was millions of Polish dead, the Katyn massacre, Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz, the annihilation of the Home Army in the Warsaw uprising of 1944, and 50 years of Nazi and Stalinist occupation, barbarism and terror.

In that same speech to the Knesset, Bush dismissed the idea we could ever successfully negotiate with Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran:

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them that they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before."

But did not Ronald Reagan's negotiations with the Evil Empire, as he rebuilt America's military might, bear fruit in a reversal of Moscow's imperial policy and an end to the Cold War?

Richard Nixon went to China and toasted the greatest mass murderer of them all, Mao Zedong, when Maoists were conducting a nationwide purge: the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Yet, Nixon ended a quarter century of implacable U.S.-Chinese hostility. Was Nixon's trip to China useless?

Three years after Nikita Khrushchev drowned the Hungarian revolution in blood, Ike had him up to Camp David. John Kennedy ended the most dangerous confrontation of the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis, by negotiating with that same Butcher of Budapest.

Were Ike, JFK and Nixon all deluded fools?

Rest of Article Here

Once again, we get the truth from a true conservative, who exposes the Neocon frauds in his own party. The Neoconservatives are all now synchronized in their repeated use of the word "appeaser" to demonize any who dare to disagree with their "religion" of interventionism. As pointed out in this article, it's just more worthless propaganda and fearmongering from the incompetent Bush administration.

 

Pat Buchanan is my all-time hero. Even more than Captain Underpants.

 

Well, first, since when should we take the word of Wilson, himself virtually a fascist, as if it was passed down to us on Mt. Sinai? For that matter, why does Buchanan suddenly approve of German revanchism even as he complains loudly about contemporary Mexican revanchism?

Understand this: the Germans backed the wrong horse in the Great War, lost, and had territory taken from them. It's called right of conquest. If you disapprove, feel free to clarify it by giving up the land you occupy to the natives and returning to your country of origin.

I'm positively astounded at the degree to which it's become tolerable on these boards to stick up for fascist genocidal maniacs in order to score a cheap shot against Bush. This is the second time in as many weeks I've seen such dribble, though I suppose I can't expect much better from you.

 

Your position is contradictory. If the original conquest was acceptable through an alleged "right" of conquest, then why do you fault political groups for making new conquests through such "right"?

 

You've got it switched - Buchanan is the conservative and your master Bush is the liberal. Bush has spent even more than ultra-liberal LBJ - and that is domestically, not including military spending.

 

This only makes sense if

(a) Buchanan were liberal (he isn't);

(b) Liberals were the only ones who don't like Bush (they aren't); or

(c) I had said one or both of the above (I didn't).

So you, sir, are wrong.

No, it isn't contradictory. Because there is no moral right to conquer (or at least not one that I recognize), only an existential right to lands that have been conquered. This is why, for instance, you might criticize the conquest of another country today, but not criticize conquests that occurred, say, 150 years ago. Like the conquests that gave birth to the United States.

And at any rate, if I'm being "contradictory," so is Buchanan; you're merely cheering him and jeering me because he says things you like.

 

The above is the most BIZARRE rewriting of history I've ever read - even LIB historians would laugh at it.

 

That's contradictory. If you truly believe it isn't, congratulations, you've successfully brainwashed yourself.

 

By 1939 any concession to Germany whether justifiable or not would have supported their agenda of conquest. It makes no sense to deal with people who would be genocidal murderers. If you can't trust them to not wipe out masses of people then you can't trust them to live up to their deals.

There might be a case for dealing with Germany years before but given Hitlers later track record I doubt it would have made any positive difference and could have made things worse.

 

Oh, well, when you put it like that...

Once again, if you object to the right of conquest, please clarify your opposition to it by returning the land you occupy back to the natives and returning to your country of origin. Whereupon you will likely need to repeat the process.

 

No native american has claimed that I am on conquered property. Regardless, all property was not taken by conquest. Some of it was purchased. Some traded for. Some negotiated for. What piece of land am I on? I don't know. Someone would have to provide evidence that it was indeed taken by conquest. Someone would also need to submit a legal claim to it.

 

I'm tracking with him completely. Not sure how you are missing it.

The statements by Pat B. suggest that somehow the Polish should have negotiated with Hitler. That they should have discussed things (which they did) and have agreed to Hitler's ultimatum. The reasoning for this is implied that the land rightfully belonged to the Germans.

SW85 is saying that this is not a legit argument, and he is right.

 

Pats statements are a rewrite of known established history on a number of fronts. False assumptions about what 'might have happened' in some areas. And a complete ignorance of out comes from others.

Pat may or may not be considered by many to be a conservative. Not sure I care, or even know what conservatism is supposed to stand for anymore. However, one thing I know that Pat is without question, he's a politician. This was to score political points, and media attention. Congrats, you gave him exactly what you wanted.